Keynote Speaker 2019 ........ Séamus Hickey - Limerick Hurler!

Séamus Hickey is an All Ireland Senior hurling Championship winner with Limerick in 2018, his senior intercounty hurling career spanned from 2006, as an 18 year old secondary school student, to his recent departure in 2018 after being part of history in ending a 45 year wait for the Liam McCarthy on Shannonside. His sporting career included an All Star, Young Hurler of the Year, a Munster Hurling Championship, a Fitzgibbon Cup with UL, selection to the Fitzgibbon Cup Team of the Century and a Railway Cup success with Munster. Hickey was elected Chairman of the Gaelic Players Association in 2015, a position he still holds and is active nationally on the topic of inter-county player welfare.

Hickey graduated with a first class honours in Biomedical Engineering from UL in 2010 and won a scholarship for an industry sponsored PhD with Alcatel Lucent and the IRC in 2011. He submitted his thesis and successfully defended it in late 2018. Hickey has worked in R&D in industry since 2014 and is currently Research Projects Coordinator for Johnson & Johnson with the Manufacturing Technology and Innovation Center of Excellence, primarily interested in investigating, testing and integrating sensors for use in transforming manufacturing processes.